stop." Some on questioning said perhaps hawks had got the other (though I found only rare cases of natives having seen or known of actual cases of capture by hawks, about 4 cases spread over many years) and others frankly said they thought the male was a sensible bird which when the missus was busy went seeking his pleasures elsewhere, as they put it, "all same me fellar time missus got picinniny, me go long Noumea come back time picinniny he born six months finish." (Rather crude but a neat simile and I might remark the majority dont even go as far as Noumea which is fortunate for government finances in the resultant fines. "Must be something in the Uvean air".) From what I could gather from natives and saw my- self, I believe that Nymphicus lays 3 eggs, sometimes only 2 and rarely four. Eggs are pure white and round from all accounts and from bits of egg shells seen by me. A rather thickish pearly shell. Eggs are laid on rotten wood at the bottom of a hole in the main trunk of a tree, almost in- variably a teak (all nests seen by me were in teaks natives say very rarely other trees are used but there are few other suitable kinds of trees on the island as far as I could see). Natives say they occasionally use a hollow spout limb, but I saw no such nests nor could natives tell me of any old ones which they had known to be used as nest sites, but used their "I think might Ko-Kot he make egg long that one" and point to a likely looking limb. Old natives who had taken numbers of birds could not remember any actual instances of having taken young ones from such spout limbs. All nests seen by me answered more or less to the following diagram and were found at varying heights. This